Children and Families Bill

Baroness Massey of Darwen Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2013 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

267: Clause 93, leave out Clause 93 and insert the following new Clause—
“Statutory rights to leave and pay of prospective adopters with whom looked after children are placed, special guardians and family and friends carers
(1) In section 75A of the Employment Rights Act 1996 (ordinary adoption leave), after subsection (1) there is inserted—
“(1A) The conditions that may be prescribed under subsection (1) include conditions as to—
(a) being a local authority foster parent;(b) being approved as a prospective adopter;(c) being notified by a local authority in England that a child is to be, or is expected to be, placed with the employee under section 22C of the Children Act 1989;(d) becoming a special guardian under section 14A of the Children Act 1989;(e) becoming a family and friends carer in prescribed circumstances.” (2) In section 75B of the Employment Rights Act 1996 (additional adoption leave), after subsection (1) there is inserted—
“(1A) The conditions that may be prescribed under subsection (1) include conditions as to—
(a) becoming a special guardian under section 14A of the Children Act 1989;(b) becoming a family and friends carer in prescribed circumstances.”(3) In section 80B of the Employment Rights Act 1996 (entitlement to ordinary paternity leave: adoption)—
(a) in subsection (5), after paragraph (a) there is inserted—“(aa) make provision excluding the right to be absent on leave under this section in the case of an employee who, by virtue of provision under subsection (6A), has already exercised a right to be absent on leave under this section in connection with the same child;”;(b) after subsection (6) there is inserted—“(6A) Regulations under subsection (1) shall include provision for leave in respect of a child—
(a) placed, or expected to be placed, under section 22C of the Children Act 1989 by a local authority in England with a local authority foster parent who has been approved as a prospective adopter;(b) for whom a special guardian has been appointed under section 14A of the Children Act 1989; (c) placed in a family and friends care arrangement in prescribed circumstances.(6B) This section has effect in relation to regulations made by virtue of subsection (6A) as if—
(a) references to being placed for adoption were references to being placed under section 22C of the Children Act 1989 with a local authority foster parent who has been approved as a prospective adopter or to being placed with a special guardian under section 14A of the Children Act 1989 or to being placed in a family and friends care arrangement in prescribed circumstances;(b) references to placement for adoption were references to placement under section 22C or section 14A with such a person or to placement with a family and friends carer in prescribed circumstances;(c) paragraph (aa) of subsection (5) were omitted.”(4) In section 171ZB of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 (entitlement to ordinary statutory paternity pay: adoption), after subsection (7) there is inserted—
“(8) This section has effect in a case involving a child placed under section 22C of the Children Act 1989 by a local authority in England with a local authority foster parent who has been approved as a prospective adopter, or placed with a special guardian under section 14A of the Children Act 1989 or placed in a family and friends care arrangement in prescribed circumstances, with the following modifications—
(a) the references in subsection (2) to a child being placed for adoption under the law of any part of the United Kingdom are to be treated as references to a child being placed under section 22C in that manner or to being placed with a special guardian under section 14A or to being placed in a family and friends care arrangement in prescribed circumstances;(b) the reference in subsection (3) to the week in which the adopter is notified of being matched with the child for the purposes of adoption is to be treated as a reference to the week in which the prospective adopter is notified that the child is to be, or is expected to be, placed with the prospective adopter under section 22C or the week the special guardian is expected to be appointed or the week the child is expected to be placed in a family and friends care arrangement in prescribed circumstances;(c) the reference in subsection (6) to placement for adoption is to be treated as a reference to placement under section 22C of section 14A or to placement with a family and friends carer in prescribed circumstances;(d) the definition in subsection (7) is to be treated as if it were a definition of “prospective adopter” or “special guardian” or “family and friends carer in prescribed circumstances”.(9) Where, by virtue of subsection (8), a person becomes entitled to statutory paternity pay in connection with the placement of a child under section 22C or 14A of the Children Act 1989 or placement with a family and friends carer in prescribed circumstances, the person may not become entitled to payments of statutory paternity pay in connection with the placement of the child for adoption.”
(5) In section 171ZE of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 (rate and period of pay), after subsection (11) there is inserted—
“(12) Where statutory paternity pay is payable to a person by virtue of section 171ZB(8), this section has effect as if—
(a) the references in subsections (3)(b) and (10) to placement for adoption were references to placement under section 22C or 14A of the Children Act 1989 or placement with a family and friends carer in prescribed circumstances;(b) the references in subsection (10) to being placed for adoption were references to being placed under section 22C or 14A or to being placed with a family and friends carer in prescribed circumstances.” (6) In section 171ZL of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 (entitlement to statutory adoption pay), after subsection (8) there is inserted—
“(9) This section has effect in a case involving a child who is, or is expected to be, placed under section 22C of the Children Act 1989 by a local authority in England with a local authority foster parent who has been approved as a prospective adopter, or placed with a special guardian under section 14A of the Children Act 1989 or placed in a family and friends care arrangement in prescribed circumstances, with the following modifications—
(a) the references in subsections (2)(a) and (4A)(a) to a child being placed for adoption under the law of any part of the United Kingdom are to be treated as references to a child being placed under section 22C in that manner or to being placed with a special guardian under section 14A or to being placed in a family and friends care arrangement in prescribed circumstances;(b) the reference in subsection (3) to the week in which the person is notified that he has been matched with the child for the purposes of adoption is to be treated as a reference to the week in which the person is notified that the child is to be, or is expected to be, placed with him under section 22C or the week the special guardian is expected to be appointed or the week the child is expected to be placed in a family and friends care arrangement in prescribed circumstances;(c) the references in subsection (4B)(a) to adoption are to be treated as references to placement under section 22C or 14A or placement with a family and friends carer in prescribed circumstances;(d) the reference in subsection (5) to placement, or expected placement, for adoption is to be treated as a reference to placement, or expected placement, under section 22C or 14A or placement with a family and friends carer in prescribed circumstances.(10) Where, by virtue of subsection (9), a person becomes entitled to statutory adoption pay in respect of a child who is, or is expected to be, placed under section 22C or 14A of the Children Act 1989 or placement with a family and friends carer in prescribed circumstances, the person may not become entitled to payments of statutory adoption pay as a result of the child being, or being expected to be, placed for adoption.”
(7) In section 171ZN of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 (rate and period of pay), after subsection (8) there is inserted—
“(9) Where statutory adoption pay is payable to a person by virtue of section 171ZL(9), this section has effect as if the reference in subsection (2E) to the week in which the person is notified that he has been matched with a child for the purposes of adoption were a reference to the week in which the person is notified that a child is to be, or is expected to be, placed with him under section 22C of the Children Act 1989 or the week the special guardian is expected to be appointed or the week the child is expected to be placed in a family and friends care arrangement in prescribed circumstances.
(8) In the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992—
(a) in section 171ZJ(1), at the appropriate place there is inserted—““local authority” has the same meaning as in the Children Act 1989 (see section 105(1) of that Act);”;
““local authority foster parent” has the same meaning as in the Children Act 1989 (see section 22C(12) of that Act);”;
(b) in section 171ZS(1), at the appropriate place there is inserted—““local authority” has the same meaning as in the Children Act 1989 (see section 105(1) of that Act);”;
““local authority foster parent” has the same meaning as in the Children Act 1989 (see section 22C(12) of that Act);”.”

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, Amendment 267, in the names of myself and my noble friend Lady Drake, suggests changes to the statutory leave and pay of prospective adopters with whom looked-after children are placed, special guardians and family and friends carers. Insertions are suggested to sections of the Employment Rights Act 1996 and sections of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992.

We had a lengthy discussion on support for family and friends carers in Committee on 26 October. I shall summarise a few points from that debate as a background to today’s considerations. An estimated 300,000 children are being raised by relatives and friends. Only an estimated 6% of children who are raised in family and friends care are looked after by the local authority and placed with approved foster carers. Children in kinship care do better in terms of attachment and achievement, but their carers are under severe strain—95% of family and friends carers say so. In the previous debate I called them heroes, and so they are. We are not really addressing the inequalities and unfairness that they face at the moment.

The Kinship Care Alliance attributes this strain to three major factors: kinship carers are not entitled to local authority financial or other support—financial support is discretionary; many kinship carers have to give up jobs to support the children and they have no right to specific services and benefits. Despite guidance to local authorities in 2011 which stated what support they should provide by September 2011, 30% of local authorities do not have a family and friends care policy. Financial costs include the immediate cost of a child coming to live with a carer, the costs of applying for a legal order to provide the child with security and permanence, loss of income and pension rights and, finally, the considerable costs of raising a child.

Children who live with family and friends care have experienced similar adversities to those in the care system or who are adopted, yet foster carers get a national minimum financial allowance and the Government are rightly improving adopters’ rights to a period of paid leave on a par with maternity leave. However, the 95% of family and friends carers who are raising children outside the care system are not entitled to anything in paid leave when they take on the care of children.

The Family Rights Group’s publication Understanding Family and Friends Care, reflecting the latest survey of family and friends carers in 2012, reported that only one in eight of the 327 respondents who answered the question about the effect that becoming a family and friends carer had had, said that they had continued to work as before, and one in nine that their partner had continued to work as before. Indeed, 38% had to give up their job to take on the care of the children—in London the figure was 46%. Overall, the picture which emerged was that carers were likely to have made sacrifices in the workplace in order to care for the kinship children. Very few just carried on working as before. Many decreased their working responsibilities and their income by reducing their hours or stopping work altogether—sometimes, I have to say, at the insistence of social workers.

Children who have been through trauma or tragedy, and who may have multiple needs, require time to settle in with their carers. The carers are often required to attend a number of meetings relating to the care and needs of the children, but the absence of any right to paid leave means that we are forcing many family and friends carers to give up work in order to do right by these children. We are pushing them into a life of dependency on benefits and into severe poverty. Some are grandparent carers who are unable to get back into employment when their grandchildren are older. Some are younger sibling carers who have few qualifications and only a few years in employment when they take on their younger brothers and sisters, but later find it difficult to re-enter the labour market. Research has shown that three-quarters of family and friends carer households face severe financial hardship. I hope that the Government will be able to address these urgent issues, and I beg to move.

[Baroness Drake (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 267, which would bring family and friends carers and special guardians in employment within scope for statutory entitlement to pay and leave when taking on the care of a child. The Bill extends the right that adoptive parents have to take ordinary and additional adoptive leave to approved adopters who have looked-after children placed with them. By contrast, the vast majority of family and friends carers who are raising children outside the looked-after system are not currently entitled to even a day of statutory paid leave when they take on the indefinite care of a child. Many have no entitlement beyond a few days’ unpaid emergency leave. That is a public policy that conveys that kinship carers have less value or make a lesser contribution than other carers of children, even though the children they care for often have complex needs. That cannot be right.

The amendment would extend the same employment rights to family and friends carers who have special guardianship orders, and to family and friends carers who take on the care of a child in certain defined circumstances. It would give the Secretary of State the authority to define those circumstances, and would extend the right to additional adoptive leave to family and friends carers and those with guardianship orders, again giving the Secretary of State the authority to define the prescribed circumstances.

There is a stark imbalance in the proposed employment leave entitlements for adoptive and prospective adoptive parents when compared to the lack of entitlements for kinship carers. That is unfair, irrational and inconsistent with the Government’s policy on the welfare and protection of children. It is unfair in that kinship carers voluntarily take on the responsibility, often in very difficult circumstances and at considerable cost to themselves, saving the taxpayer considerable amounts of money and achieving better outcomes for the child than if they had entered the care system. It is irrational in so far as the statutory rights to leave for parents, adopters or prospective adopters have been or are being improved, but no statutory rights are extended to the kinship carers of thousands of our most vulnerable children. It is inconsistent with current welfare policy in that the absence of a statutory right to leave, on taking care of the child, raises the barriers to carers’ continued workforce participation and increases the likelihood that they will become long-term unemployed and dependent on benefits. That undermines participation in the workforce as a route out of poverty for the children and the carer.

During the passage of the Welfare Reform Bill, the Government recognised that family and friends carers make a valuable contribution by caring for vulnerable children, and exempted those carers from work conditionality under the universal credit during the first 12 months of caring for a child. The Government have time-limited that exemption in the expectation that many carers should return to the labour market after a period of adjustment, so why not make provision for a statutory entitlement to leave and reduce the incidence of kinship carers leaving the labour force in the first place?

However, the problems that kinship carers face do not lie only in the requirements of the welfare system, they also suffer from the complete lack of recognition in employment law. The imbalance in their right is inconsistent with the protection of child welfare, in that kinship carers need to take leave to settle the children, who have often been through so much. This often comes after a long period of family crisis; the children can be traumatised and insecure, and they need to know that someone is there for them. That is precisely why social workers often want or require carers to take time out of work. There are also the practical requirements of making appointments with schools, solicitors and social workers, arranging legal orders and so on. Often, the children arrive unexpectedly in just the clothes they are wearing, but there is not even the most modest statutory provision allowing employed carers leave from their employment. Yet kinship care is the most common permanency option for children who cannot live with their birth parents. The same arguments apply to the extension of parental leave to kinship carers as were advanced for the introduction of adoption leave in the Employment Act 2002: the need for time for children to settle with and bond to carers and the advantages of enabling carers to remain in the labour market.

To scope the problem, an estimated 60,000 kinship carers have dropped out of the labour market to bring up children. The reasons for this include the needs of the child, but the fact that they are not entitled to time off increases the likelihood of their leaving the labour market, so contributing to the high proportion of kinship carers living in poverty. Family Rights Group research found that one-third were living on incomes below £350 a week. Grandparents Plus found that 73% of kinship carers were working before the children moved in, but that almost half of those who had been working left their jobs when the children arrived. Some 83% of those who gave up work say that they would have liked to have remained in work, while of those who gave up work just 13% are now back in work. Similarly, a Family Rights Group survey found that 38% of family and friends carers had left their job, lost their job or taken early retirement when they took on the care of the child.

The Bill presents the opportunity to extend parental leave entitlements to kinship carers who take on the indefinite care of a child, and to give them parity with prospective adopters. The majority of family and friends carers are not entitled to even one day of statutory paid leave. That cannot be fair. The arguments for providing a right to leave are equally compelling, whether looked at from the perspective of the carer or of the child.

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[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response and other speakers for contributing to this short debate. I am delighted to hear that the Minister has instigated research. There is an awful lot of research around already on this issue, so I hope that it will not be too lengthy. A later amendment from my noble friend Lord Stevenson suggests, I think, one year of probing and research. I do not think that we need a year to solve this one. The organisations that we have mentioned already have a wealth of data on the problems, statistics, anecdotes and case studies of family and friends carers. Therefore, I hope that any research will build on the existing research, will be carried out quickly, and that something will be done very quickly for these people who are saving the state lots of money, as has been said.

More importantly, these carers are saving children from disappearing down various plugholes in the system. It is well known that children need stability and love and kinship carers are known to provide this. It is too easy to take a short-term view. Generally, outcomes for children in care are poor—let us face it. They have poor or lower academic achievements, higher involvement in criminal activity and drugs and alcohol and more early pregnancies. This is a sorry story. Family and friends carers are stepping in and trying to mitigate this situation for their grandchildren, nieces and nephews or whoever, often at great cost to themselves, as we have heard. They are saving the state money and contributing to the welfare of children.

We have heard time and again that the Government are sympathetic to these carers. I have also heard time and again that local authorities are encouraged to give support, but that is not statutory support. As I said earlier, 30% of local authorities have no policy on family and friends carers. I agree that there is insufficient information on this and we must understand all the issues, so I appreciate that research will be needed. However, as I say, it must not be lengthy and must not delay help for these family and friends carers who are giving so much to society and the children whom they serve. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 267 withdrawn.

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[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Drake’s Amendments 267A, 267B and 267C. I will say a word later on Amendment 267BA after my noble friend Lord Stevenson has spoken to his amendment. My noble friend Lady Drake has set out the principles of these amendments comprehensively and I just want to add a few comments.

When children first move into kinship care, the carers and the children need time to settle and adjust to the upheaval in their lives. I know a kinship carer who received three children at midnight because their daughter had died from a drug overdose. That is an upheaval beyond imagination. She said that the children were grieving, she was grieving and they had very little time to do it properly. Children often arrive without notice in these circumstances. For example, a parent may be in hospital or there may be domestic violence or abuse. The proposal is for a period of leave similar to parental leave.

An estimated 60,000 kinship carers have dropped out of the labour market to bring up children. There are many reasons for this, including the high needs of the children and the fact that the carers are not legally entitled to any time off to accommodate the needs of the child, especially at a time of upheaval when everybody is in crisis and needs time to settle down.

Amendment 267 seeks the extension of emergency leave entitlement to grandparents, to enable a grandparent to take reasonable time off work to provide help where a grandchild is ill or to deal with an unexpected event at school, for example a school closure due to poor weather. Some families would prefer a working grandparent to be able to take time off to provide childcare when a child is ill or a school is closed. I—and, I would guess, several people in this room—have certainly taken time off or given up time to look after grandchildren when there has been a crisis in the family.

The amendment seeks to help parents to balance work and their caring responsibilities, and to relieve the pressure on families when a child has a problem. Currently, one in four working families depend on grandparents to provide childcare. Some 70% of all working grandparents say that they look after their grandchildren and 29% of grandparents are working. The impact on employment overall should be minimal as the amendment will spread across different employers the impact of an employee’s absence due to a family emergency, such as a child’s illness, rather than one employer, typically the mother’s, experiencing the full impact.

I was interested that in Denmark, apparently, it is usual when a child is ill for the mother to take the first day off, the father the second and a grandparent the third, which seems very sensible. Again, I support the amendments and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, I support Amendment 267B, particularly from the perspective of carers for adults, although, of course, I also support it with reference to carers for children. A Carers UK/YouGov poll found that 22% of UK adults had seen their paid work negatively affected as a result of caring, including 2.3 million who had given up work as a result and about 3 million who had reduced their working hours to care at some point in their lives.

Research has demonstrated that the point at which caring begins to have a significant impact on carers’ ability to work is when 20 hours a week or more is provided, with some analysis indicating that the tipping point may be even lower at 10 hours. Without the right support, millions of workers are leaving work to care and the cost of this to individuals, business and the economy is huge. Recently, research by the Personal Social Services Research Unit at the LSE calculated the public expenditure costs of carers leaving paid work at a staggering £1.3 billion a year, based on the cost of carer’s allowance and lost tax revenues. Additional analysis by Age UK indicates that the economic cost rises to £5.3 billion when lost earnings are taken into account. One quarter of working carers report that they feel they receive inadequate support to enable them to combine work and care and only half think that their employer is carer-friendly. The survey of carers found that nearly two-thirds of carers in work have used annual leave to care, while nearly half have done overtime to make up for taking time off to care.

The task and finish group set up by Employers for Carers and the Department of Health states in its final report that,

“the issue of supporting carers to remain in work is not only a problem, but also an economic opportunity. Supporting carers to remain in work can bring considerable benefits to carers themselves, employers and the wider economy”.

This is partly a government publication.

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[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I follow my noble friend Lord Stevenson in supporting this attempt to reach a healthy compromise. There is already a great deal of research and investigation into the plight of family and friends who are carers. I hope that that can be built on. There is a meeting with officials, which I think the Minister has set up for next Wednesday, and I hope that any noble Lord here who is concerned about this could get details of that meeting. I hope that at that meeting we could discuss this proposal for research and who will be involved. I hope, too, that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, has just said, that involvement will be integrated across various streams of various departments.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My Lords, modern families come in all shapes and sizes, and it is important that we recognise the extremely valuable contribution that is made by many different individuals. I shall address each of these amendments in turn, beginning with Amendment 267BA. This amendment would require the Secretary of State to review the provision for kinship carers and special guardians, as moved a moment ago by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson. As I have said in, as he put it, a carefully worded, but, I hope, clear response to the previous amendment, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills will undertake research into kinship and friendship carers and special guardians and their participation in the labour market in order to ensure that support provided by the Government is appropriate to address these people’s needs.

The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, questioned the length of the research in the previous amendment and stated that plenty of research was already available. By way of reassurance—I hope that she takes it in this spirit—I would say that it is important that we take the time to scope the project properly in advance of starting the research. I welcome the input of the organisations mentioned and, indeed, others that might not have been mentioned. I give this commitment: I shall return to this House with further details on the likely timetable on Report and note some further carefully chosen words. The noble Baroness alluded to a meeting with officials that has been arranged. I confirm that it is set for next Wednesday at 11am. The Bill team will provide further details by e-mail about that meeting. I encourage as many people as would like to attend to come.

Turning now to Amendments 267A and 267B regarding adjustment leave for kinship carers and leave for carers, as I am sure noble Lords will agree, carers play a vital role supporting and caring for their children or loved ones, and they reduce the need for state funded care. These points were made with great passion today by a number of noble Lords. These individuals can often struggle to balance their work and caring responsibilities effectively and without support may not be able to stay in work. It is important that we recognise this contribution and provide carers with the support that they need to remain in the workplace. From time to time, carers may need time off to manage emergencies or breakdowns in care. Many kinship and friendship carers also experience a period of adjustment when a child comes to live with them. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, gave the Committee a rather heartbreaking example of an occasion when a parent died of a drug overdose. If I read her correctly, the child appeared on someone’s doorstep.

Changes in living circumstances can happen suddenly and families may come under great strain to adjust quickly to the caring needs of a child who may be facing many complex issues and emotions. The right to time off for dependants enables them to take time off to make arrangements for their care. Once the child is living with kinship or friendship carers, he or she becomes their dependant, and any carer who is an employee will be entitled to time off. This enables the carer to take a reasonable period of time off work to take the action necessary to deal with specified short-term emergencies, and this is a day one right that is available to all employees. The employee does not necessarily need to give their employer advance notice of their intention to take leave under this provision as long as they inform their employer as soon as is reasonably practicable. This is because emergencies rarely come with notice, and again examples were given earlier in this debate.

The right to time off may not meet the needs of all individuals in all circumstances. Many employers provide additional forms of leave for compassionate reasons to enable employees to deal with sudden and often traumatic changes in circumstances. Caring is often a long-term responsibility. All carers, including kinship and friendship carers, may need to consider long-term changes to do with their changed circumstances. The Government believe that the right support for carers is to allow them to change how they work to better accommodate their caring role on a long-term basis.

Carers are already eligible to make a statutory request to work in a flexible way under the current legislation. However, the extension of the right to request flexible working in Part 8 of this Bill will drive a culture change which should mean that flexible working becomes more widespread and better integrated into standard working practice. My department, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, has been working closely with the Department for Work and Pensions and their private sector working group to encourage more employers to consider flexible working practices when they are designing and advertising jobs. They have developed, for example, a strapline to use when advertising jobs: “Happy to talk flexible working”. This should increase the availability of jobs that can be done in a flexible way, thus enabling more carers to remain attached to and re-enter the labour market.

Extending the current right to request to all employees will enable more people, including those who have more informal or infrequent caring responsibilities such as kinship or friendship carers, to retain an attachment to the labour market when they have experienced significant changes in their personal circumstances. The noble Baroness, Lady Drake, raised the issue of supporting grandparents to remain in work when they provide childcare. The Government agree that it is important to support the needs of older people and grandparents, and to help them stay in work, especially when they have caring responsibilities. This has been a key driver behind the extension of the right to request flexible working, and it will help these groups to balance work and care commitments on a long-term, sustainable basis. It will support the informal caring that is often provided by grandparents, about which I will have a few more words to say later.

I turn finally to Amendment 267C regarding emergency time off for grandparents. We have heard many examples of the invaluable practical and emotional support provided by grandparents to their children and grandchildren, an issue raised particularly by the noble Baroness, Lady Drake. I welcome this debate as an opportunity to pay tribute to the vitally important role that grandparents play in supporting families to juggle work and childcare responsibilities.

The issue of emergency time off for dependants was debated during the passage of this Bill in the other place. The Minister for Employment Relations and Consumer Affairs outlined the qualification criteria for this type of time off, and for the benefit of noble Lords I shall do so again here, albeit fairly briefly. This provision is intended to give employees a statutory entitlement to time off work to deal with an emergency involving a dependant. The qualification criteria for this type of time off are deliberately broad, and this is to ensure that any employee on whom a person reasonably relies to make arrangements for the provision of care is able to qualify for this type of time off in circumstances where there has been an unexpected disruption or termination of care arrangements. It is important to emphasise that the legislation enables all employee grandparents who are relied on to make arrangements for the provision of care for their grandchildren to qualify for this time off in such circumstances.